Job card and service invoice

What a job card is for

A job card, job sheet or service ticket travels with the device or vehicle through your workshop. It answers five questions anyone in the shop might ask: whose is this, what is wrong, what did we agree, who is working on it, and what has been used. It is not a GST document; the tax invoice raised at closing is. But a good job card is what makes the invoice accurate.

Paper job cards work for a small counter, but they get lost, smudged and stuck in drawers. The common symptoms: a customer calls and nobody can find their job, a part is fitted but never billed, or two technicians work on the same complaint without knowing it. Whether you use a printed book, a spreadsheet or an app, the fix is the same: one numbered card per job, one place where all open jobs can be seen, and a rule that no device leaves without the card being closed.

Job card fields

Give the customer a copy or a message with the job number at intake. It is their receipt for the device.

Status stages

1. Received: device in, job card opened.
2. Diagnosed: fault found, estimate sent.
3. Approved or Declined by the customer.
4. Waiting for parts, with expected date.
5. In repair.
6. Ready: customer informed.
7. Delivered and invoiced: job closed.

Count jobs in each stage every morning. A pile in waiting for parts is a purchase problem; a pile in ready means customers are not being called.

From job card to invoice

At delivery, the parts and labour on the job card become invoice lines. The Hyderabad inverter job closes like this (rates illustrative):

The approved estimate was ₹1,800 including tax, and the final bill comes within it. If a bill is going to exceed the estimate, ask the customer before doing the extra work, not at the counter. How parts and labour are taxed together is covered in invoices for repair and service jobs. This is general information, not tax advice.

Pickup and on-site jobs

• Note pickup date, who collected the item and its condition, ideally with photos.
• When you transport a customer's goods to your workshop, there is no sale; keep the job card or a challan with the item. See when is a delivery challan required.
• For on-site visits, record arrival and finish times and get a signature or OTP on completion.

Measures worth tracking

The last one surprises many owners. A device delivered as a favour, to be billed tomorrow, is often never billed. Read running an after-sales service business for more.

Daily routine

1. Morning: review open jobs by stage and promised date.
2. Call customers whose jobs are ready.
3. Follow up on pending approvals and parts.
4. Evening: close delivered jobs with invoices; no device leaves without one.
5. Weekly: review unbilled and long-pending jobs with the senior technician.

Doing this with Tally and Cashflow OS

Cashflow OS has service jobs for repair and pickup work: open a job, add items and service charges as the work goes on, then close it and invoice. Parts come from your Tally stock items, and the invoice is posted to Tally through the connector, so stock and the customer's ledger stay correct. The owner can see the team's activity from the app.